Explanation: Eerie pillars of light ring the edges of this snowy little planet. Of course the little planet is planet Earth, shown in a nadir-to-zenith, around-the-horizon, little planet projection. The spherical panoramic image mosaic maps a view from Siilinjärvi in eastern Finland. Flat ice crystals, like those more often found in high, thin clouds, are gently fluttering in very cold air near the surface. The pillars of light appear as their briefly horizontal facets reflect upward directed light from ground sources downward, toward the observer. In fact, the fluttering crystals produce an effect analogous to the shimmering columns of moonlight or sunlight reflected by surface waves across water.

Looks to be from a jetty on the frozen Siilinlahti harbour, at the end of a road named Valkamantie.

Google Maps says the lat/long is about:N63.0717, E27.6708

If you type "63.0717,27.6708" into the location bar in Google Maps, you will see a green arrow point to the jetty. (And if you right-click on the spot and select "What's here?" you will get an even more precise lat/long.)

http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/nic ... sby-396522 wrote:<<In Chapter One of The Great Gatsby, a dreamy Jay Gatsby stares longingly at the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's pier. He dreams of the girl he met before he went to war, and hopes to regain her. This quest for the love of Daisy, despite her having married Tom Buchanan, is but a romantic illusion. The past that Gatsby hopes to regain is irretrievable; Daisy is not only older, but she is now a mother and wife; Gatsby himself is not the young innocent that he was when he first met Daisy. For, he has worked for Dan Cody and has made such shady connections as Meyer Wolfscheim. Nevertheless, Gatsby fashions for himself an unreality out of reality, "a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing." He purchases a home on West Egg, he holds parties with hundreds of people who do not know him, he smiles and smiles, he buys shirts of every color, purchases a car of leather-bound interior and fenders like wings, he gulps down the "incomparable milk of wonder," but Daisy is offended by West Egg, "this unprecendented place that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village.">>

<<The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock is a significant symbol within the book. To Gatsby, the green light represents his dream, which is Daisy. To attain her would be completing Gatsby’s American Dream. The first time the green light is seen in the novel is also the first time Nick sees Gatsby. Fitzgerald writes, “…he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away…” The green light is described as ‘minute and far away’ which makes it appear impossible to reach. This will prove to be true for Gatsby. The green light also represents society’s desire and the seeming impossibility of achieving the materialistic American Dream.

At the end of the novel Nick concludes the book with these words, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” This describes Gatsby’s inability to move on from the past. Everything he does in the novel is to try and recreate the past. In this metaphor, Gatsby tries to goes against the currents—or time—to reach the green light or his dream. And as in the quote, the green light which represents his dream, ‘recedes’ like waves year by year.>>

luna wrote: photos of light-pollution on APOD ... please stop suggesting this stuff is a good thing.

geckzilla wrote:The way the light interacts with the ice crystals is beautiful. It is a beautiful sort of light pollution.

And the kind they don't get to see in North Korea!

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20011105/ wrote: <<Researchers analyzed records for 7,200 global weather stations and used satellite observations of night-lights to identify stations with minimal local human influence. U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellites measure the brightness of nighttime lights all over the Earth's surface. These were used to identify weather stations where urbanization was most likely to contaminate the weather records.>>

ddorn777 wrote:Either way, I like these "little world" photos. I saw a sun pillar just the other day backed by a glorious sunset sky, and had no one to share it with. I just enjoyed the beauty in silence.